California Water Quality Monitoring Council Meeting
The California Water Quality Monitoring Council (Monitoring Council) was established as mandated by California Senate Bill 1070 (Statutes of 2006) which requires the boards, departments and offices within the California Environmental Protection Agency (Cal/EPA) and the Natural Resources Agency to integrate and coordinate their water quality and related ecosystem monitoring, assessment, and reporting.
Monitoring Council members include representatives from Cal/EPA, the Natural Resources Agency, drinking water, stormwater, publicly owned treatment works, agriculture, citizen monitoring groups, the public, the scientific community, and water supply. The Monitoring Council is also required to consult with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, whose representative attends Monitoring Council meetings in a non-voting capacity.
The Monitoring Council develops specific recommendations to improve the coordination and cost-effectiveness of water quality and ecosystem monitoring and assessment; enhances the integration of monitoring data across departments and agencies; and increases public accessibility to monitoring data and assessment information.
The Monitoring Council, in coordination with the State Water Resources Control Board, recommended a “comprehensive monitoring program strategy that utilizes and expands upon the state’s existing statewide, regional, and other monitoring capabilities and describes how the state will develop an integrated monitoring program that will serve all of the state’s water quality monitoring needs and address all of the state’s waters over time.”